Social shopping continues its decidedly mixed progress. Instagram is shutting down live shopping, which lets creators tag items for purchase within a livestream. But TikTok is testing an in-app checkout that connects to a product catalog.
B2B data and tech company Demandbase announced $175 million in new financing from Vista Credit Partners. It’s the company’s first raise since 2017 and more than doubles total funding to $318 million. Demandbase is one of relatively few martech firms to take major new funding this year.
A large majority (79%) of tech workers would rely on artificial intelligence for everyday tasks, compared with just 48% of the general public, according to this MITRE-Harris Poll survey. We don’t know whether AI experts share the tech workers’ confidence, which is a bit worrisome since tech workers will control the pace of AI deployment. Tech workers and the public agree that government and industry should do more to protect against AI problems.
Disney has agreed to license more than 200 characters, costumes, and environments (but not voices or talent likenesses) to OpenAI for Sora, its gen AI video platform. This is highly unusual for Disney, which generally sues AI models for copyright infringement; in fact, it sued Google for that a day before announcing the OpenAI deal. Disney will also invest $1 billion in OpenAI, nicely illustrating how very eager they are to join the AI party.